Disney Planning to Showcase Its Theme Parks In VR Headsets

Disney theme parks are wonderful places to visit. But traveling from remote areas to reach a park often demotivates one from enjoying.

Disney has, therefore, decided to recreate its theme parks in head-mounted virtual reality displays. Those who are familiar with the Oculus Rift probably know what a head-mounted virtual display is. If you are coming across this term for the first time, in simpler terms, it is a display device which you wear on your head like a helmet and step inside your favorite virtual worlds.

Though the company’s Imagineering creative technical design lead Bei Yang didn’t explain how actually the showcasing of theme parks in head-mounted displays will work, he expressed his optimism for the potential possibility to work with both Disneyland and virtual re-creation of the land. Talking to VentureBeat, Yang said:

“If you think about the way we approach technology in general, The Walt Disney Company is about creating content,” Yang told GamesBeat. “It’s about creating connections among friends and family through stories. We can do that through any number of mediums. VR is just one of those mediums.”

Disney has planned to sustain its existing Disney parks even after the introduction of VR alternatives. Mr Yang hinted out these intentions saying that Disney has a history of not giving up despite introducing various variant mediums. He said that Disney continued publishing books without being affected by the arrival of TV. Similarly, movies are being made in spite of the strongly competing games.

“With VR — yes — you may be able to replace some of the experiences you can get at the parks,” he said. “But ultimately, we see the park as something that is different. We can leverage VR technology in those, but at the same time, watching a movie at home isn’t the same as watching a movie in the theater.”

VR headsets have not yet reached consumer market. But we can’t deny their potential to create a radical public interest by providing people with fascinating experience — a fact that the companies have complete realization of.

Along with Facebook’s Oculus, there are many other companies who are working on VR. American video game development and digital distribution company Valve is one of those companies which is likely to release its VR headset at the end of 2015. A similar device from Sony’s PlayStation is also being expected to release next year.